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Interview with Marco Moronesi and Luca Marcellini

How was the idea of Face4You born?
Marco: In the current business market many people use emojis and take selfies. The idea of the app was born from these trends: why don't create an emoji through a selfie? Moving forward in the project, the keyboard was the most important addition as technically nothing like it already existed: through the keyboard the customer has a series of emojis available that are accessible without needing to go back to the photo album. From there we have also added Stickers, emojis applied to an image. This function has various positive aspects: first of all it allows a picture to be immediately personal, for example a landscape; and from that a sort of copyright is born, as a person can put a trademark when they take a picture of a beautiful sunset.
Even if then the picture is shared with multiple users, the face of the author of the picture is imprinted on it. Furthermore, as the stickers can be zoomed in, they can be used to substitute people’s faces. Then we realized we had an application with multiple functionalities.
How was the cooperation between you and Luca born?Marco: Luca and I have known each other for many years and previously worked together. We are friends and we see and speak to each other very often. I am really lucky to have him as a partner, Luca is an ambitious person with the technological and creative competences that I lack of.
Luca: Marco and I complete each other, he is the brains, I'm the muscle. The original idea of Face4You was actually born thanks to Marco. Nearly a year ago he proposed to me this project and I immediately accepted. After various researches we came up with App to you, and we then discussed the project that subsequently developed from the initial one. This is a product we truly believe in, as it will probably have a viral effect on social networks and all messaging services in general.
Which target does your app aim to?Marco: We are very positive about it and hope it will gather many users. We think that in the beginning the ones that will be more interested will be teenagers, who always more communicate through images. We are sure that then the target will widen more and more and involve a bigger range of people. The reality is that this app is so easy that even a 3 years old or an 80 years old lady will be able to use it.
Luca:We think the effect will be viral with all age groups, since despite having or not the app downloaded on your phone, you can still use the emojis and stickers. The only relevant thing is that you have any of the other various services such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messanger, WeChat, Telegram.
So, according to you, which are the strengths of your app?Luca: For sure, the easy use of it: the app has been developed so that with 3 basic steps you can obtain the result. And then you have the possibility to forward all the emoticons to your contacts. We have created a complete service for the users that includes thirty free icons and this allows the app to be different from other services that only offer a few options in the free version. We will probably turn it into a free app in the future after adding different packages.
Marco: On top of the graphic side of it that makes it very compelling, its strength is also the come outs: you can add a sticker to an image, send an emoji, you have a pre-set photo gallery, you can copy and paste, therefore change the face of a friend on a picture.
What are the future developments of the app?Marco: We will aim to create some packages that as well as emotions will also add new elements to the person in the picture, such as a new hairstyle for the girls or a beard for the boys. We will also create specific packages for dogs or children. We don’t preclude anything. We also have other developments in mind that we will soon show you. In the mean time we hope people will soon start to put their face on it!